Senator Stevens’ Big Regret

By COLlive reporter

Among those in the State of Alaska who will miss the former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, who died in a plane crash last week, will be the Chabad Shliach.

Rabbi Yosef Greenberg, director of Lubavitch Jewish Center of Alaska in Anchorage, kept a warm relationship with the U.S. Senate’s longest-serving Republican.

“He was a great supporter of the Alaska Jewish Community, the Lubavitch Jewish Center and the establishment of the Alaska Jewish Historical Museum,” Greenberg told COLlive.com.

Stevens played a crucial role in shaping the economic and social development of Alaska, which only became a state in 1959, with many calling him ‘Mr. Alaska’ or ‘Uncle Ted.’

“Sen. Stevens will be remembered for his outstanding leadership, and his legacy will affect all Alaskans for generations to come, Rabbi Greenberg and wife Esty said in a statement.

In June 2008, the senator and his wife attended the Bar Mitzvah of Levi Greenberg, son of the Shliach, where they were treated like a family members.

He graciously took interest in autographing his name on then-8-year-old Rivky Greenberg‘s leg cast incurred from a soccer injury.

Sporting a blue kippah, Stevens told the mostly Jewish crowd how impressed he was of the caring and intellectual education Chabad provides to its own children and the community.

“I wish I had gotten the same education,” he said to the applause of the crowd.

Watching the video about Joe Lieberman and the Rebbe, where the Orthodox Jewish Senator tells the story of how he became religious because of the Rebbe’s Shluchim, Stevens has a special request.

“Senator Stevens told me then that Lieberman was his neighbor in Washington and asked me to write a letter to him from the Bar Mitzvah,” Greenberg recalls.

“Joe Lieberman responded very warmly about the Bar Mitzvah and about our relationship with Stevens who was a great friend of Israel and of the Jewish people.”

Stevens, a canny political operator, made it a point to attend the celebrations and events in Washington DC held by American Friends of Lubavitch.

The first Chabad event in the Capital he attended was in the 70s in honor of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the last was the 1992 event in honor of the Rebbe’s 90th birthday, where he was joined by Rabbi Greenberg and a delegation from Alaska.